Easter turned out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day this year. I had the best of intentions and got up early to make Easter baskets and hide eggs for an egg hunt since none of the four fake totally-real-people-who-have-social-security-numbers-and-everything-I-swear accounts I created to get tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll was a winner in the lottery that I'm becoming more and more confident is fixed to only invite Senators' wives and contributors to Presidential Campaigns. So we didn't get to plan on rolling eggs on the White House lawn and maybe sneaking off to pull a carrot out of the White House Garden and meeting the President and the official National Easter Bunny. Instead they got this crap er... loot.

Looking back, I realize my critical error in judgment was in deciding it would be a good morning to get up early before the general conference my church holds the first Sunday of April, and go downtown to walk around the Tidal Basin and see the Cherry Blossoms before the rest of D.C. got out of bed.

"Why are the Cherry Trees so special, Daddy?"

"Well, honey, because a long time ago, The Japanese government gave the United States all these Cherry Trees as a gift. Every year in the Spring Cherry Trees bloom with all these pretty pink blossoms. So they planted them all around the water here so in the Spring the Tidal Basin would be really beautiful. And now every year, Japan sends its entire population over to D.C. in the month of April to take pictures of those trees."

But ultimately, I didn't have any expectations of idyllic moments or non-crowded streets so I didn't think I was setting myself up for failure. I just thought it would be fun to walk around as a family and it was a nice morning to be outside. If the cherry blossom thing wasn't working out, we'd do something else, right? When we didn't get out of the house until after 8:00 and then when we got there and realized the traffic was already awful at 8:30 am, we easily aborted that plan and headed over to pretty-much-deserted Capitol Hill to walk through the Botanical Gardens instead. See? I was being FLEXIBLE.

The girls were even fine in the car the whole way there. But a combination of six-year-old insolence and two-year-old impatience once we got out of the car led to fifty-seven fits, a grandiose case of sibling rivalry, several dozen threats of time-outs and groundings and eventually just giving up before 11:00 and going home to put them each in their rooms and so I could go to my own room to curl up in the fetal position and cry myself to sleep. Egg hunting eventually was done but while The Caterpillar took a nap to sleep off her mad, The Dormouse hunted eggs by herself in the front yard. Then I later had her hide half of the ones she found so The Caterpillar could find her own by herself later. Then we ate peanut butter on bread, which might not have had any jelly because I need to go to the grocery store. Not exactly the family Easter Sunday Norman Rockwell painted.

Intellectually, I know that these are just stages that will pass. That all too soon, I'll be longing for those days when they were little and incorrigible and the worst thing I have to deal with was the fact that one threw a fit because she couldn't get out of the stroller and run into oncoming traffic. I know that I'm the one in control and I shouldn't let it bother me. But MAN those two can really push my buttons sometimes. Years may fly by with one season following another, but sometimes the days... ARE ENDLESS. I wish there was a mood altering drug I could take to give me patience until we get through this because I don't want them to remember these moments when Momma could have done better. Moments there have been way too many of lately.

And before you say it, yes, I know that they are moments only. And before all the fighting and fit-throwing, we actually had a few good moments playing under a Saucer Magnolia that was dropping it's petals all over the sidewalk in front of the Air and Space Museum.

But here's the real problem: I don't get to choose what moments they remember.

So the truth is, if I give them more of angry-yelly-annoyed-Mom moments, then they're probably going to remember an angry-yelly-annoyed-Mom. Even if I only take pictures and write blog posts about moments when I wasn't being angry-yelly-annoyed-Mom.

So the truth is I need to do better. Have more patience. Consider my reactions before I fly off the handle for something that won't matter in a week. Maybe... every once in a while... lose a battle for a change and have that be okay.

*sigh*

That seems haaard.

Maybe I could just blame President Obama. If I'd gotten those Easter Egg Roll tickets, we never would have bothered in the first place.

I fully understand where you are going with this, but I have to say that pictures have shaped a lot of my memories. So I like to think that as long as I take pictures where it looks like we had a great time, that's how we'll remember it. Like I said, that's how I like to think, but not necessarily how it will be.

Me in 3 Seconds

Married, 40ish mom of two (or three, or four, depending on how you keep score) who stepped through the lookinglass and now finds herself living in curiouser and curiouser lands of Marriage, Motherhood, and the Washington, D.C. Metro Area.